We-Mind vs. Me-Mind: A New Vision for Success in Leadership & Life

By Jessica J.J. Lutz

We-mind vs. Me-mind: a New Vision for Success in Leadership and Life offers a new way of looking at how we relate to what we value in ourselves and others. Not just in the world of work, but in the realm of family relationships and our own personal universe as well. 

 

Could this book be the magic wand that enables you to play to your authentic strengths, erasing insecurities, and making you feel successful and accomplished? The approach that at last reduces burnout in the workplace? A new definition of success that can really attract and retain a diverse mix of top talent?

 

Former international news correspondent Jessica J.J. Lutz promises such transformations as she shares what she has learned from two decades reporting in the Near East, her own journey out of burnout and from her subsequent coaching of high-performers to have more impact. Interlaced with different strands of scientific research, this book explains why so many highly driven people – mainly, but not only women – feel held back by an invisible force, and how to break free.

 

Do you also find it astonishing that there are still so few women at the decision-making level, despite numerous candidates and the mountains of money our progressive Western world invests in changing this situation? When she returned to Europe, Jessica couldn't wrap her head around it. She had always enjoyed working in male-dominated environments. And while she acknowledges that sexism seriously blocks women, she wasn't ready to subscribe to the rethoric that just blames 'the men' for women's lack of career advancement. 

 

When she set up a life & leadership coaching practice in Brussels, her clients tended to be women who were overflowing with ambition, but at the same time held back when opportunities arose. Through them, she started recognising some of this behavior in herself as well. This intrigued her. 

 

She decided to get to the bottom of it. The result is this book, which proposes a new frame in which to think about ourselves.

 

Here is its main premise:

We all have a We-mind and a Me-mind. One of the two leads, the other follows. On the whole, women tend to be more we-minded and men more me-minded, but there are quite a lot of we-minded males and fewer me-minded females. The degree to how We- or Me-minded we are is unique to each one of us. As the name suggests, our We-mind primarily focuses on the well-being of the group and our Me-mind has its own well-being at heart. 

 

Both minds have their own values, priorities and strategies for goal setting, problem solving, conducting business, communication, approaching leadership, conflict and other areas of life. But in a professional setting we tend to appreciate only the me-minded way of being, which alienates dominantly we-minded people.

People who are dominantly we-minded are more likely to struggle with what Jessica calls an inner glass ceiling. That said, many of the 'flaws' women are told they need to overcome in order to be successful and leader-like, are in fact we-minded life strategies, which are misunderstood and not valued.

 

Reframing what we value in ourselves and others opens the way for more people to feel good about themselves, to be successful in leadership and life, and it's good for the planet as well.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jessica J.J. Lutz
• Release date: Sep 18, 2023
• ISBN: 9789464780918

Jessica J.J. Lutz

Jessica’s life changed forever when she gave up her job in the Dutch foreign service to start reporting on a war. Armed with a passion for writing since her childhood (her first piece was published when she was 9), and a desire to right the wrongs in the world, she embarked on a career as a news correspondent in the wider Middle East. During the two decades she worked for print, radio and television, she also authored multiple non-fiction books, short stories, a children’s book and novels. Jessica knows about bumps in the road. Recovering from post-traumatic stress disorder and burnout awoke a voracious curiosity in her about the underlying reasons that some get bruised and overwhelmed and others bounce back. She learned the true meaning of resilience and setting healthy boundaries. She also developed a wealth of knowledge in areas like behavioral science, social psychology, neuropsychology, the microbiome and energy healing. And while motherhood may have stretched her work-life balance, it also taught her the importance of loving unconditionally. Switching careers to become a life and leadership coach, Jessica has helped countless clients identify their true potential, rewrite their subconscious beliefs and have the impact they want. Her desire to contribute to a better world has not diminished. With this book she hopes to empower the individual reader, but also drive home that more We-minded leadership is needed, not only to make the professional world more welcoming to women with ambition, but to save the very planet.

Book preview

We-mind vs. Me-mind

By the same author

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Happy Hour

Wie Harry den Eiffelturm gerettet hat

De Nederlandse Bruid

WE-mind

vs. ME-mind

A New

Vision for Success

in Leadership

and Life

––––––––

JESSICA J.J. LUTZ

Impact Imprint

D/2023/Jessica J.J. Lutz, publisher

We-mind vs. Me-mind

Copyright © 2023 Jessica J.J. Lutz

www.jessicajjlutz.com

Cover design and typesetting by Kjell Olsson, Koru Form & Function

Set in 11/16 Plantin MT Pro

The author has made every effort to trace the owners of copyright material reproduced in this book. In the event of any omission, please contact the author, who will make appropriate restitution in future editions.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author.

The resources in this book are provided for informational purposes only and should not be used to replace the specialized training and professional judgment of a health care or mental health care professional.

ISBN: 9789464780918

Preface

People who are passionate about lifting up other people’s lives, even changing the world, often can’t sit still. They are ambitious, always ready to roll up their sleeves, aspiring to leadership and wanting results today, not tomorrow.

But I also meet many women – and some men – who don’t have the impact they want, despite all that drive and effort. They risk burning out as they keep working harder and harder without getting ahead. I used to be one of them.

Often we women, who are such busy bees, don’t understand why we keep failing to break through to the top. Or why some of us seem to abandon their promising careers.

When I came back from Türkiye to Europe after two decades as a radio and television news correspondent, I was surprised that the battle for equality was still not settled in the West. At the same time, it bothered me that usually the only explanation given was to blame the men, the ‘patriarchy’, for blocking us with a glass ceiling.

I had worked among men all my life, and always enjoyed it. I love men. So that argument didn’t sit well with me, even though I’m the first to acknowledge that sexism can seriously hamper a woman’s career.

Another thing happened too: I set up my own coaching practice. I needed to tell people what I was doing now and how I thought I could help them. And while I loved my new career – indeed, I was passionate about it – and I was used to performing in public, the words caught in my throat as soon as I started to explain.

I recognized a similar hesitation in my clients.

I decided to get to the bottom of it. I spent seven years reading all kinds of scientific publications from different disciplines. I tested my ideas against others, checked what resonated with clients and what didn’t, tried out my theories on myself. I reached the conclusion that besides the glass ceiling of the male-dominated workplace, we can have our own inner glass ceiling as well manifesting as a lack of self-belief, perfectionism, impostorism and the like.

Digging deeper, I came to see that we all have a We-mind and a Me-mind. Each of us has their unique mixture of the two, but men tend to be more Me-minded, with a focus on their own well-being, and women more We-minded, with a focus on the well-being of the people around them. This is not just about women and men, I discovered, because there are men with a predominantly We-mind and vice versa. The problem is that we tend only to value the Me-mind.

Once I grasped the full scope of how different these two minds actually are, I learned to appreciate both in me. Insecurities like fear of success, impostorism and self-doubt vanished. I realized that I had had my foot on the brake at the same time that I was trying to accelerate. I learned to let go.

I wish for you to stop holding back too. I believe that you will make the world a better place by believing in yourself, and feeling accomplished, fulfilled and whole. Understanding what the two minds are about will help all of us understand each other better. An attitude that balances We-minded and Me-minded values will lead to kinder and more rewarding relationships at work and in our homes.

Why I wrote this book

Baghdad calling

It’s a grim autumn day in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad. A bomb has just exploded in the hotel I’m staying at – luckily while I’m out – and I’m rushing back to report on the attack. That is my job. I am a news-correspondent for Dutch and American media in a region full of conflict.

I am pretty fearless, which doesn’t mean to say that I’m never afraid. But for as long as I’ve known myself, I have had my emotions under tight control and I certainly won’t show them. People have called me poker-faced, distant, or ice-queen. I know that inside I’m not like that, but it’s true that fear, tension or pressure tend to make me extra-cool-headed.

Baghdad is pulsing with the anticipation of being invaded by the American army. People growl at foreign reporters, rallying behind their leader, Saddam Hussein. He is a merciless dictator. My ears are still ringing with the hysterical chants of men, their mouths frothing with white-foamed fright, who stuck the needle of a syringe into their veins to write their leader’s name on their arms in blood. I feel their fear in my gut. Small bombs are exploding not only in my hotel, but all over town. So yes, it is unpleasant to be there. And yes, I feel unsafe, but that is not unusual. What is new for me, however, is that I don’t seem to be able to push through my fear.

For many years I’ve been thrilled to find myself in situations like this. Ignoring fatigue was energizing, overruling pain and other physical discomfort empowering. Until, one day, out of the blue, it seemed, I lost all interest in my job and my joy in life. My work, however, was what gave me meaning. Giving a voice to the victims of injustice, violence and disaster was my way of making the world a better place. I was convinced that informing the public and ­decision-makers in various places surely would make someone do something to change the situation. But all of a sudden, I couldn’t care less.

I slowed down for a while, but then realized I was not ready to give up. Going to Baghdad was part of my reboot.

But look at me now. How disappointed I am in myself, for finding no new reserves of strength and feeling sick with fear. Never before have I felt this strong sense of responsibility, the urge to protect myself, the need to stay alive. Slowly it dawns on me what the reason might be. This time, I’m not only risking my own life. I am four months pregnant.

It hits me like a hammer : I finally have to admit that, despite all my bravado, I am different from the men I am surrounded by. I resent the thought. I grit my teeth and continue with my job.

Little did I know that that cold, overcast day in Baghdad would turn out to be the beginning of a long and bumpy journey of self-discovery and acceptance. Along the way, I met many other women who, like me, never even questioned that they were totally equal to the men who dominated their professional world. They were women who were confident and knew they had a lot to offer, who were ready to buckle down and ignore hardship in order to contribute. And yet, at some deeper level, like me, they felt as if there was something wrong with them. ( Not that we’d ever admit that publicly ! )

‘ It’s not because I’m a woman,’ is our mantra. Indeed, we feel at ease in the male world. I would never have accepted that my gender had anything to do with, well, anything. I now know it does, but only up to a point. Once I found out what the real issue is, I decided to write this account of my exploration of the self and the system.

The construct of the We-mind and the Me-mind links together different strands of science and my own observations and experiences in order to explain why so many highly driven people – not only, but mainly women – feel held back by an invisible force, leading to inner turmoil and self-doubt.

I hope to explain why so many women feel inadequate or unappreciated, also why there still is so much inequality, despite the enormous effort and amount of money that’s being poured into changing this situation. Above all, I hope this book will inspire you, dear reader, to better understand yourself and what drives you, so you can have a meaningful, fulfilling life while making the difference only you can make every day.

Mother on the roof

When asked what she wanted to be when she was big, my youngest sister always said she wanted to be in charge of an orphanage. She and my middle sister would happily take care of all their dolls for hours on end. I preferred it when we’d build tunnels in the sandpit to drive our toy cars through, climb trees or dig deep holes in the garden to create a hide-out, which they also were happy to do.

When I was six, we had moved from a town in the Netherlands to a tiny village in Belgium, where my parents bought a dilapidated house with a huge garden. They spent many years rebuilding and reshaping it, going totally wild in expressing their creativity. In the process, they taught us how to lay bricks, do carpentry, operate a spinning wheel, make sculptures out of aerated concrete, harvest asparagus and other useful skills. My Dad took pride in knitting his own sweater and my mother would be fixing the roof.

At the girls-only village school, I was groomed for traditional life. Apart from religion, maths, geography, history, Dutch and French, I was educated in a house-wife’s tasks : sweeping floors properly, dusting, embroidery, knitting and crocheting. On the playground I learned what my place was. You’ll read more about that later.

My second sister and I, age three and four.

My father was a good-natured, charismatic man. I had a mother as a role model who was constantly proving that she could do any ‘manly’ task just as well as the ‘womanly’ tasks. One of my aunts was on the barricades in Amsterdam demonstrating for equal rights. On a conscious level, therefore, I developed a total sense of equality. Nevertheless, I cannot remember ever seeing my father cook, do the dishes or clean the house. At the table, he’d be served first and get the best piece of meat. I learned the meaning of the word authoritarian because one of my parents’ friends would call him that. His favorite saying was the Latin ‘quod licet Iovis, non licet bovis’ meaning ‘what is allowed for Jupiter, is not permitted for cattle’. This made clear to us, children, that he was above the laws that we had to obey. Without intending to, my parents perpetuated that unconscious bias that men are entitled to what we, women, have to earn. But it wasn’t until much later that I became aware of it.

During the two decades that I worked as a journalist in Türkiye and surrounding countries, not fitting their stereotypical image of a woman, I was usually treated like a man by the men I was interacting with. That only confirmed my equality to me. So when I returned to Europe, I could not believe that the struggle for women’s recognition was still in full swing. At first, I thought this was none of my concern. This book is proof that I changed my mind.

My why

During my two decades as a news correspondent around the Middle East, I have seen first hand the destruction and sorrow caused by conflict or natural disasters, aggravated by human greed. At the time, I didn’t think twice about the fact that most people in charge were men.

I’m still not comfortable with labeling along gender lines, nor with blaming ‘the men’ for women’s lack of advancement in their careers. As you will see, I offer a different perspective, a new frame, based on how we use our brain.

That said, when I moved back to Europe I was astonished to see how disadvantaged women in our progressive Western world still were in many fields. Women were (and are) still largely excluded from decision-making and thereby from shaping the future. Equally surprising was that the mountains of money that were being invested in countless initiatives to give women their fair share of education, pay, pensions, positions of power and what have you were not having the desired effect.

In Brussels, I set up shop as an integrative life and leadership coach. Given where I came from, my focus was on helping people overcome the mental, emotional and physical effects of trauma. My first clients were women who glowed with ambition and, at the same time, felt unable to move when opportunities arose. Because of them, my eyes were opened. I started recognizing some of this behavior in myself as well (as you will see further down in Innovative Impostors).

As I worked with more and more clients, I also witnessed that releasing their trauma was definitely improving their quality of life, but I realized it did not always set them free to pursue their ambition.

The journalist in me needed to find out what was going on.

In this book, I will share with you what I have learned from my own journey and from working with high-achievers who don’t come into their own, about what blocks and what unlocks us.

The examples may be mostly of women, and I acknowledge that my perspective is that of a white, European woman. Forgive me that bias. However, I want to stress that I’m addressing anyone who feels like the odd one out, or who has much more to offer than they can currently show or share, whatever the color of your skin, your ethnic or cultural background, or your gender is. This book is my attempt to uncover the underlying patterns that connect us all.

By doing so, I hope to contribute to creating a culture in which we, our children and their children feel valued for being exactly who they are, a culture in which those who are driven by values other than power and profit feel welcome to take charge. Together we can change the face of the earth, by changing the way the world is run. That is my why, my purpose.

Who this book is for

First and foremost, I’m addressing women who feel that the top performer in them is held back by something they can’t put their finger on. If you don’t identify as a woman, but do feel that something intangible blocks you from being successful, this book is likely to hold some valuable information for you too.

I also aim to provide partners, colleagues and bosses with insights on how we all tick and what needs to change if they want to support their frustrated counterparts.

Last but not least, I hope to offer an out-of-the-box perspective to organizations who have trouble attracting, recruiting and retaining female employees with high potential.

I’m writing about people who are highly driven, but don’t have the impact they want. They perform at the top level in terms of energy, but not necessarily so in terms of potential achievement. They may have entered a leadership position full of zest and good intention, only to feel undermined by inflexible rules, by micro- or not-so-micro-aggression, or by a sense that they don’t belong. This may lead them to jump ship and look for another organization to work for, or a completely new field to work in, to set up their own business, or to burn out. Each time, having to start again feels like a set-back, but somehow, that’s better than sticking to the chosen path. If that’s you, this book will better equip you to succeed.

Why we can be ambitious and compelled to achieve, and yet hold back at the same time? Why do we feel confident about our expertise and know we have a lot to offer, but at the same time are reluctant to showcase it? How come we yearn to be ‘discovered’, yet, when someone gives us a compliment, we shy away from it? What is going on when we are driven by the goal of excellence, yet at the same time feel inadequate or consumed by doubt about whether or not we’re getting it right? What happens when we are strong and self-reliant, but also feel overwhelmed by the needs of others? How can we be driven by the need to feel useful, while procrastinating at the same time? Where does that drive to take charge come from and what makes us combine a strong sense of responsibility with the desire to be left alone?

All these questions I needed to answer for myself. This book is the result of many years of self-investigation, reading, learning, studying, experimenting and working with clients. It felt like putting together a complex puzzle piece by piece.

If this is what you aspire to, the book may help you climb the ladder, gain influence and power, or grow your business exponentially. It may give you the nudge you need to finally apply for that leadership role, to write your book, paint like you’ve never done before, or dedicate your life to a good cause. Above all, I hope to persuade you to embrace and express all the potential you have in you. I hope to show you how to be at peace with yourself, how to feel valued, fulfilled and meaningful both at work and at home. I hope you’ll live and love full out without that being an effort, and that you’ll contribute to a better world